Breweries "Visited"

Monday, July 22, 2013

Day 590: Urthel Saisonniere

Day 2 of the Beercycling trip took us from Kortrijk to Zwalm (roughly 32 miles) with a stop in Oudenaarde. The schedule was ride through the morning, find a great picnic spot for lunch, head off on another leg of the journey to a brewery (Liefman's on this particular day) and then finally a few more miles to the hotel.

This looks pretty ok for a picnic!

What I particularly enjoyed about this trip was the variety of towns we encountered along the way. I feel like I got a great sense of what life in Belgium is like. Accommodations for the night were at Hotel De Brouwerij (translation The Brewery Hotel) in the town of Zwalm, which I'm pretty sure had cows outnumbering humans at a ratio of four to one. But despite the very rural surroundings, we had an excellent meal at De Brouwerij that was accompanied by an impressive beer list.

B&B in an old brewery? Why, yes, I will.

Unfortunately for me as I begin to piece all my notes and photos back together post-trip, I'm realizing I did not take the greatest notes. The tasting notes are workable. It goes off the rails when I try to figure out from blurry backgrounds of photographs where the beer was consumed during the trip. I know I took notes on something I drank this day, but I can't quite put my hands on the right photo.

Instead I'll fast forward a few nights to a new bar in Brugge named La Trappiste. It's in a super cool underground space that I was told was about 800 years old. Not bad. Not bad at all. That's the scene where I drank an Urthel Saisonniere brewed by De Leyerth Brouwerijen.

Urthel Saisonniere is a unique combination of saison and white beer. The description from the brewery's website calls it a sparkling golden, slightly cloudy, refreshing, easy drinking beer with a nice bite. I can assure you that this description is spot on. In addition to a slightly cloudy blond color ale, it had a dense white head. The flavor is bright and a little grassy with lots of clean hop flavor. At this point on the trip, my allergies were going bonkers and I couldn't get a good read on it's aroma. Let's go with delicious beer for the smell.